Here’s just one problem caused by overloading the iPhone’s home button. Let’s say I’m in Safari, and I want to launch another app. Most of the time, the app I want to use is on the first home screen. How do I get from Safari to the first home screen? In earlier versions of iOS, it used to be simple. To get to the first1 home screen, hit the home button.

That’s not how it works anymore. If I want to go to the first home screen in iOS 4,2 it’s more likely to play out like this:

You can’t even resort to just hitting the home button blindly a bunch of times, because if you hit it too rapidly, the iPhone will interpret it as a double-tap. Besides, you don’t know how often to hit it; if you hit it too often, you’ll jump into the «Search iPhone» screen. For example, if you’ve previously launched another app from the first home screen,4 the whole process looks very similar to what I’ve shown above, but the same number of home button taps now brings you to the search screen:

It’s a constant game of «are we there yet?» «No.» «Are we there yet?» «No». «Are we there yet?» …

This isn’t a hypothetical example. This is something I do probably a dozen times a day, and every time, it causes me a tiny bit of frustration because I’m doing more work (and I’m being forced to think more) than I should be.

What’s the Point of Remembering the Home Screens’ State?

It’s not clear to me why Apple does this at all. If I launch an app from the fifth home screen, is it highly likely that the next app I want to launch is also on that home screen? If I launch an app from inside a folder, is it highly likely that the next app I want to launch is also inside that folder? Probably not. So why not just send me to the first home screen when I hit home? That way, I always know where I end up when I hit «home».

Need something from the first home screen? Hit home. Need something from the second home screen? Hit home, swipe once. Third? Hit home, swipe twice. Want to search? Hit home, swipe once. You don’t have to wait and see where the home button brings you; you can do it blindly. You know what the result of every interaction will be before you do it. Never a miscommunication. Your iPhone is predictable again.

And only.

Which is what I want to do most of the time, because it contains the apps I start most often.

When you’re in the task switcher’s music control area.

And by the time you hit «home», you probably don’t remember where you were the last time you used the iPhone’s home screens.

If you liked this, you'll love my book. It's called Designed for Use: Create Usable Interfaces for Applications and the Web. In it, I cover the whole design process, from user research and sketching to usability tests and A/B testing. But I don't just explain techniques, I also talk about concepts like discoverability, when and how to use animations, what we can learn from video games, and much more.

Hi. My name is Lukas Mathis. I studied Computer Science/Software Engineering and Ergonomics/Usability at ETH Zürich. I work as a software engineer and user interface designer for a swiss software company creating process management software. I've written a book about usability. It's been translated to Chinese and Japanese. My first computer was a Performa 450, my first programming language was HyperTalk, my first electric guitar was a cheap Peavey, my first videogame was a VCS 2600 and my current snowboard is from Lib Tech. I live in a small cottage in a remote part of the Swiss Alps, and you can reach me at or on twitter.